


The Tangerine Tree (or, How To Create The Perfect World)

by kalypsobean



Category: Super Paper Mario (Game)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 10:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It doesn't matter if the world is saved if you aren't living in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tangerine Tree (or, How To Create The Perfect World)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CurareChai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurareChai/gifts).



> Happy Holidays to maudlinmusings! I do hope you like your gift.

Nastasia cried when they told her Bleck was gone.

Mimi didn't understand it at first - Nastasia was the strong one, always burying everything to get the job done - but then everything started to change, subtly at first, and then faster, like the world had suddenly begun to spin a different way and it took a minute for everything not bolted down to catch up with the wind. It was all anybody could do to keep up, though nobody quite knew what they were moving towards. Nastasia was calm after that, although she takes to the shadows and it's a while before anyone hears from her.

 

Without Nastasia to show her the way, Mimi starts to understand loss. 

It's not that she didn't know it before; not when she was the one doing the taking and knew just how to cut to cause the worst emotional pain, and not when she found herself on the other side of the battle, pushing confusion aside for loyalty and perhaps a bit of affection. This is a different kind - a kind of ache that niggles and tears until there's a neatly worn hole where certainty used to be and what's left behind is the knowledge that there's no going back, it won't ever be the same, like it used to be.

 

"We're going to build a perfect world," Nastasia says, when she comes back.

That's what they said, when they tried to pull Nastasia away from her grief. The problem with that is, well, Mimi doesn't know where to start. She asks Nastasia what to do; that's how it always had been, before, but this is new. Nastasia looks back, any hint of emotion hidden behind her glasses, and it's a while before she speaks.  
Mimi doesn't know what she's supposed to say when Nastasia asks her what she likes.

 

It's not so easy to change the world, even though that's what she promised.

It's not like changing her clothes, her appearance, becoming someone else for a reason or just because. It isn't just her that needs to change, and they don't always go along. Nastasia says she can do it, though Nastasia stays inside now, remaining remote and quiet though from grief alone or from something else Mimi can no longer say. Nastasia has no dreams, at least none that she shares, and Mimi sometimes cries, because she doesn't know what to do on her own, and whatever it is, is not enough. Merlee takes her in, and she tries her best to be thankful, but she isn't perfect, not at first.

 

Mimi starts with something small, something that she can control.

It's not her fault that she has to train them, that they come to her just as directionless as Nastasia is but they let her mould them; they offer themselves up to her in payment of imagined debts and she takes it in stride, like it's the world offering her a way out, a way forward. This is something she knows, full of things she likes. Though not Rubees, not yet, but an idea occurs, somehow, and she runs with it.  
Nastasia will be proud, when she comes to visit. She never does, but Mimi tells her anyway that she can.

 

Soon there's an industry around her, forming almost without her raising a hand.

There's the game, and she builds on it, when people ask for more. Why keep it to herself when she set out to do so much more, she thinks, and she asks her cutie-pies to make a destination, something bigger than the mansion. It starts with a cafe. A place to eat turns into a place to meet friends, and that becomes a place to sit and talk, and then to sleep. Her mansion is well-run, and full of people; they come and they go, an ever-changing crowd that she sometimes loses herself in, pretending to be an onlooker who never went to war. Perhaps that is what Nastasia does, when they let her alone, perhaps not. It is not comforting to Mimi; she can't breathe when she forgets, like she could never go back to that even though she can't see past tomorrow.

 

She feels alone, the longer it goes on.

Luigi comes to visit, once, but it's not the same; there's too much there, and Mimi can never be sure what is left of the one she knew. She tells Nastasia about it; Nastasia says that Luigi is the same person he was, but Mimi is not so sure. Everyone looks so haunted, these days, and it's becoming quite annoying. Flopside seems to orient itself about Nastasia a bit more each time, like a shield as it forms around itself and becomes less reliant on outside trade. Even Merlee is a shadow of herself, not quite moving on, and that Mimi would know. 

 

In the end it's the little things that add up and boil over, to the point where the world can't keep them flat and tidy any more.

The mansion is perfect enough; one of her cutie-pies planted a tree for her, and it's while she's eating the very first fruit ripe enough to pick that she understands. It's not enough to make the world into what it could be, and it never was. Flopside is strong, the markets rebuilt and homes for everyone, the pit covered over - Nastasia's doing, quiet and unseen. Even that, small steps and all, is not enough. Mimi's seen enough to know that a big change won't last, that people have to adapt over time, like she did, like they all did, but big gestures are different.

She takes a tangerine to Nastasia, sad even though she knows the tree will grow more, and watches as Nastasia tastes it; she imagines from recent memory the feel of juice in her mouth and the taste as it hits the back of her tongue.

"The world's not perfect unless you're in it," she wants to say, but instead she takes Nastasia's arm and pulls, until they're outside and the sun shows Nastasia how pale her skin is, how busy the town is around them.

"It's not perfect unless you make it that way," she says, instead. And if that means she has to lead Nastasia for a while, then it's a good thing the mansion's grown too big to run on her own.


End file.
